Make Up Your Mind

Although it's not the moon, Antarctica has the world's harshest environment with temperatures down to negative 60C and winds up to 250mph in the austral wintertime. The term "wind chill factor" was invented there. It is a huge continent (1.7* larger than the contiguous United States) with no permanent residents and is protected by international treaty. Although about 35000 people "visit" each year, the majority see it by ship and do not sleep overnight. Many countries have government science stations there, and the US has three: Palmer south of Argentina, McMurdo south of New Zealand, and the South Pole station at 9000ft elevation. Each year at McMurdo there are about 500 support staff and 500 visiting scientists. It is the hub for US research programs across the continent.

The logistics of mounting an expedition to McMurdo (via US Air Force) and into the wilderness beyond are considerably dramatic and so even the brief interruption in operations during the government shutdown effectively ruined the entire year's efforts. Specifically, about 40% of all US Antarctic research was cancelled this year due to the government shutdown and the remaining 60% were severely impacted. For the full official word see the US Antarctic Program's website at http://www.usap.gov. My own research project, ARIANNA (http://arianna.ps.uci.edu), was dramatically reduced, and I've personally been cut from the revised skeleton expedition and laid off.

I commented this onto facebook:

Dear Congress, I am not a priori opposed to Republicans. I AM opposed to
1) deceitfulness
2) not being responsible for what you said and did yesterday, and most especially
3) following your team rather than making up your own mind.
Don't sacrifice your own integrity just to be on one side or the other.
PS: Please turn the gov't back on and be good to the people you represent.